How To Make Progress

By Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S.

The most difficult thing about following a workout program
is deciding when exactly to change it. You’ve always got two voices in your
head—the one telling you to stay the course and give your workouts time to
work, and the other one tempting you to scrap the routine you’re doing
altogether and try something new to “shock” your body. Of course, listening to
one influence or the other can lead to disappointing results, but you can’t
listen to both, either.

Or can you?

Let me show you how to make one program last indefinitely by
making slight changes over time that both keep things interesting and allow
continued gains.

The Program

Let’s use the following workout as an example. It’s a
shoulder routine with an emphasis on strength, so you not only build bigger
shoulders but a stronger overhead press, too. The dip and pushdown at the end
work the triceps, which assist the shoulders on presses.

1 Barbell Overhead Press

Sets: 5 Reps: 10, 8,
5, 5, 5

2 Seated Arnold Press

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

3A Barbell Upright Row

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

–Superset with–

3B Dumbbell Lateral Raise

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

4 Dip

Sets: 4 Reps: As many
as possible

5 Cable Pushdown

Sets: 4 Reps: 10

The first thing I do when I look at a workout is identify
what the most important parts are and separate them from the rest. Obviously,
if the goal is bigger shoulders and a stronger press, the overhead press is the
most important exercise. It’s the first thing on the list and there’s plenty of
volume assigned to it. This is where most of your gains are going to come from.
The dip and the lateral raise are pretty much just add-ons and, while useful,
aren’t going to make or break my progress. If I’m running short on time, can I
skip them and still get a great workout? You bet. But I really want to make
sure I hit the overhead and Arnold press hard.

I’d follow the workout as written the first time out, just
to get a feel for it. But by Week 2, I might begin making some very small
changes. Note that it’s important not to change things just because you’re
bored (and after just one week, NO ONE should be bored). The main reason you
should make changes to a program is so that you can perform it for longer and
milk more gains out of it.

Start With Reps

Your body adapts to rep ranges more quickly than any other
variable, so I would play around with the reps a bit. If you hit 10 reps for
all three sets on the Arnold press in Week 1, keep the same load and go for 11
reps in Week 2. You may only be able to get 11 reps in the first set and decide
to stick with 10 reps for the remaining two sets. That’s fine; it’s still
progress. If you chose an appropriate amount of weight in Week 1, you shouldn’t
be able to get more than 12 reps a week later, and I wouldn’t go higher than
that—you want gradual progression without peaking too soon. Ten reps and 12
reps affect the body similarly, so even though you’ve changed the workout a
bit, you’re still working the muscles toward the same goal—you’ve just
increased your work capacity so that you’re now doing more reps with the same
weight.

You can increase the reps on several of the exercises.
However, this isn’t mandatory. Some lifts, like the overhead press, work better
if you stick with the reps assigned to them for longer. The form on overhead
presses tends to break down quickly, so sets of five are great for working with
heavy weight and getting some volume in, but five reps isn’t so many that you
get sloppy. Also, since the goal is strength, it doesn’t make much sense to
push your reps too high, or you train a different quality than the one your
program is intended for. In Week 2, I’d probably increase the weight by
two-and-a-half to five pounds on the sets of five, or keep the same load as the
prior week and shoot for six reps but no more.

By the third week, you have the option of increasing the
reps again or upping the weight. What started as sets of 10 might now be sets
of 12–15, but I wouldn’t go any higher than 15 or you’ll find yourself training
more for endurance. If you add weight, be conservative, and make sure you don’t
cut yourself off at fewer than the number of reps prescribed.

After three weeks of training, your workout might look like
this:

1 Barbell Overhead Press

Sets: 5 Reps: 10, 8,
6, 5, 5

You added a rep to the first set of five and then increased
the weight on the last two sets.

2 Seated Arnold Press

Sets: 3 Reps: 12

3A Barbell Upright Row

Sets: 3 Reps: 12

–Superset with–

3B Dumbbell Lateral Raise

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

4 Dip

Sets: 4 Reps: As many
as possible

You’ve added reps to each set each week

5 Cable Pushdown

Sets: 4 Reps: 13, 11,
10, 10

Add Intensity

After a few workouts, you’ll notice that some exercises are
coming along better than others. Your overhead press and dip keep progressing
smoothly, but you don’t feel you can add any reps to the upright rows or any
more weight to the lateral raises. Now you can get more creative with how you
perform the exercises. Try adding weight to the upright rows and then
performing the lateral raises with a two-second hold at the top of each rep.
This will force you to back the weight off on the lateral raises, but that’s
OK; you’ll work your way back up using this harder variation.

Another reason to
change your training is to customize it based on goals and individual
weaknesses or injuries. If, after a few weeks, you feel like your shoulders
or elbows are getting sore from all the heavy pressing, or your delts just
aren’t growing, try flipping the order and do the Arnold press first. This may
fatigue you enough that your overhead press suffers later, but you’ll adapt
within a few weeks. Doing the Arnold press first will warm your upper body up
thoroughly so that you can perform the barbell overhead press more safely, and
the pre-exhaustion effect will make your delts work harder to hit all your
reps.

Let’s say your chest is a big weak point and you want to add
some more work for your pecs to this shoulder day. In that case, you could
perform dumbbell bench presses first, then do the overhead press, and then DROP
the Arnold press. This is important. Whenever
you add an exercise, you need to take another one out. The dumbbell bench
press may be for your pecs, but it still works your shoulders and triceps, and
three sets of it on top of Arnold pressing and everything else you’re
doing—both in this workout and whatever you’ve got lined up on chest day—is
risking overkill. If your pecs are the priority, your shoulders aren’t, so make
the necessary adjustments.

Change Exercises

Another switch you can make is to the main lift. If you have
access to different kinds of equipment, why not switch up the implement you use
to press with? Pressing with a log or axel will attack your shoulders in
different ways, correcting weak points in your press and stimulating new muscle
gains. You could also opt for a seated press or an incline press, which, again,
would integrate your pecs into the workout. Pick three or four of these lifts
and cycle them weekly—hit each one in turn. Eventually, you’ll want to test
your strength, so you can do away with the first two sets of 10 and 8, as these
will only fatigue you. Perform a few low-rep sets (3 to 5) until you get to a
weight you think you can break your 5-rep record with. Or test your 3- or 1-rep
max. Build the workout around testing your strength, and let that inform your
program going forward.

Here’s another evolution of this workout, for a guy who has
identified his chest as a weak point.

1 Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

2 Barbell Overhead Press

Sets: 5 Reps: 10, 8,
5, 5, 5

3A Barbell Upright Row

Sets: 3 Reps: 12

–Superset with–

3B Dumbbell Lateral Raise

Sets: 3 Reps: 10

Hold each rep at the top for two seconds

4 Dip

Sets: 4 Reps: As many
as possible

5 Cable Pushdown

Sets: 4 Reps: 15, 12,
10, 10

Rest Less

Don’t forget about rest periods, either. You can boost your
conditioning and increase the fat-burning effect of your workout by shaving a
few seconds off your rest periods each week. Just make sure you don’t cut too
much too soon, or you’ll hurt your ability to perform your lifts intensely. For
instance, since the upright row and lateral raise are already superset (no
rest), you should allow a good amount of time to recover before repeating them
(perhaps two minutes). If you cut the rest down and jump back into the upright
row again too soon, you may find you can’t complete all your reps.

In short, progressing a workout is more about creativity
than exact science. By making tiny tweaks, you preserve the integrity of the
program while giving yourself room to increase the challenge and learn how your
body responds to different stimuli. If you do it right, you can avoid plateau,
injury, and boredom. When you learn to program workouts for yourself, you stop
hopping from one set of workouts to another and make one routine do the work of
dozens.

For a HUGE collection of routines that you’ll never get
tired of, pick up my book, 101 Best
Workouts Of All Time, available on amazon.com and www.101bestworkouts.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Hyson is the training director for Men’s Fitness and Muscle&Fitness magazines, and the author of 101 Best Workouts Of All Time (also known as The Men’s Fitness Exercise Bible).